Familial strife initiates a fresh and lively clique of magic-wielding teens.
This debut middle-grade fantasy stars a boy whose true parentage hints at a magical destiny.
Ten years ago, Todd Selby missed his morning train at Waterloo Station in London. He also happened to save a woman who’d been jostled by rambunctious children from falling. Enter Grimble the goblin, who presented them with a swaddled baby. He told them to take the child east to Canterbury and settle there. The enchanted couple did so, and now the child is 11-year-old Jeremy Cutler. He has no idea that he’s an Everborn, from the magical kingdom of Averland. Nor does he realize that Harkkruin, the Dark Apprentice of Mordin, once again moves against the Everborn people. Only Jeremy’s neighbor Charles Gaper seems capable of preparing the boy for the challenges ahead. He places Jeremy on a special train to Coventry and into the care of Mr. and Mrs. Nockins, fellow Everborns. From his room in their home, he accesses a tunnel leading to the Fairwoods of Averland. He soon meets his mentor, Windermere Hawksley, who gives him the Seeson and Thyme Observation Deck of cards and informs him that his real parents await in the lost Castle of Airenel. In this novel, Faix unfurls a vibrant, complex tapestry reminiscent of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter universe. Adding emotional weight to the narrative is that it’s set during Halloween and then Christmas, holidays that Jeremy’s adoptive mother, Sharon, hasn’t had the heart to celebrate in the years since her own mother died. Her awakening from a depression coincides with the protagonist’s descent into the magical. Though Jeremy is 11, older teen readers should enjoy the detailed plot that involves a rash of kidnappings, time travel, and numerous inventive fantasy scenarios. One episode includes the pirate ship Polaris, which carries Jeremy upriver and through a forest lit by colorful fairyflies, where “the air tasted sweet and cool, with hints of peppermint and gingerbread.” This opening volume of a series also introduces fellow youthful adventurers Tripp Cunning, Ree Spinnler, and Ckyler Blewett, with whom our hero must prepare to face darker threats.
Familial strife initiates a fresh and lively clique of magic-wielding teens.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-944715-24-3
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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